Mistranslated Advertising

• When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in leather," it came out in Spanish as "Fly naked."
• Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
• The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No va" means "it doesn't go" in Spanish.
• When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave."
• When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product something that when pronounced sounded like "Coca-Cola." The only problem was that the characters used meant "Bite the wax tadpole." They later changed to a set of characters that mean "Happiness in the mouth."
• A hair products company, Clairol, introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the manure stick.
• When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as here in the USA - with the cute baby on the label. Later they found out that in Africa companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside since most people can't read.